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Thursday, April 3, 2014

Classic Album Review: The Cure - The Head On The Door (1985)

By
the mid Eighties, the music of The Cure was starting to evolve. The 1984 album,
The Top, had been a lightweight and far more pop-orientated affair than
previous efforts, while strong radio-friendly singles like the funky ‘Let’s Go
To Bed’ and the jazzy genre-bending ‘The Lovecats’ also marked a notable change
of direction for the band. Suffice to say, Robert Smith had started to reveal a
happier side, and a hitherto untapped penchant for idiosyncratic pop music was
slowly but surely being unveiled.So
by the time The Head On The Door came out in 1985, The Cure had already taken a
couple of giant leaps towards mainstream/crossover success, and in all respects
this album succeeded in consolidating the band’s new found popularity with the
masses.

It’s
not that Smith and co had completely abandoned the goth-pop formula and post-punk
leanings that dominated earlier work, it’s more that The Head On The Door struck
just the right balance between the light and the dark.

It
helped of course that the album contained a couple of brilliant singles in the
form of ‘In Between Days’ and ‘Close To Me’, both of which enjoyed high
rotation on the increasingly influential MTV playlist, something that did much
to enhance the band’s fledgling popularity outside of the UK.

‘In
Between Days’ is quite simply one of the best songs The Cure ever released and
it doubles as The Head On The Door’s opener. Propelled by a repetitive baseline
(an old Cure trick) and Smith’s virtuoso guitar (he’s not the best guitarist in
the world but he’s certainly one of the most instantly recognisable post-punk
guitar heroes), ‘In Between Days’ reflects the coming together of those two
strands of the band’s sound – its bouncy upbeat tempo being almost at odds with
its murky lyrical content.

‘Close
To Me’ on the other hand, is far more straightforward, and even today probably
represents one of Smith’s finest “pop” moments. Bright, inventive, and
undeniably romantic, it helped establish Smith as a master of the eccentric
love song. The catchy lyrical hooks and cheery synth certainly helped highlight
the band’s new commercial sensibility.

Instrumentally
and musically, The Head On The Door found The Cure adopting a far more diverse
and worldly approach than ever before, one that incorporated several strong
international flavours – as with the Japanese feel of ‘Kyoto Song’, and the
Latin/flamenco guitar on ‘The Blood’.

‘Six
Different Ways’ is a poppy little number, devoid of very much at all outside of
exposing Smith’s vocal at its most quirkiest, and it almost threatens the
filler status I’d definitely assign to ‘The Screw’, which sounds more like a
half-finished and rather annoying idea than a fully-fledged track befitting an
album of this quality.

‘The
Baby Screams’ finds us back in familiar bassline-driven territory, while the
much loved ‘A Night Like This’ (was this a third single?) is a dark repetitive
guitar-based track and one of Robert Smith’s best ever laments of lost love,
with – unthinkable for fans of the band’s earlier minimalism – what appears to
be a pretty darned impressive sax solo.

The
closer ‘Sinking’ is a monumental combination of heavy synth and
introspective/dark lyrics, and it challenges ‘Push’ as the album’s main
highlight outside of the singles. ‘Push’ features a brief but wonderful set of
psychedelic lyrics, and with its waves of cascading guitar it has lost none of
the intensity it first wooed me with nearly 30 years ago ... it remains one of
my favourite Cure tracks.

The
Head On The Door still rates as one of The Cure’s best albums, it cemented
Smith’s reputation as a clever wordsmith and exposed his love of the short
sharp quirky pop song. Over the course, Smith went on to change many of the
default rules that originally applied to his band’s music, and despite the
occasional glance back over his shoulder (see Disintegration, Bloodflowers) –
with some degree of success it has to be said – this album gave The Cure
genuine fresh momentum, and there really was no turning back beyond this point.